(This article first appeared in the December print edition of the Hendersonian.)
One hundred years ago, Henderson leaders had a dream. Today, Rodger Brown has a vision.
The objective of each: Open a Soaper Hotel at the corner of Second and Main streets.
The mission of local businessmen in the early 1920s was to raise enough money to build a modern hotel from the ground up. The Richard Henderson Soaper Hotel opened in 1924.
For Brown, the goal is to gut the existing building and make it a hotel again, nearly 40 years after it stopped being a lodging establishment and started being used for a variety of offices, restaurants and miscellaneous purposes.
“My goal is the first quarter of 2026” for the Soaper to reopen as a boutique hotel, Brown said.
He envisions 50 to 54 rooms on the upper five floors of the building, with Hometown Roots restaurant, Roast coffee shop and the Gatsby Room for private events remaining on the ground floor. He said he hopes the project can be done for between $7 million and $10 million.
“I’m a big fan of projects” like this, Brown, a Henderson businessman who operates a landscaping and construction company and owns and develops properties, said.
“Downtown has been vitalized” with new restaurants, shops, The Vault event center and civic energy, so he thinks opening a boutique hotel now “would work.”
“It’s a really cool building,” Brown said. “…. I’m really surprised someone hasn’t done it already.”
Brown is undertaking the project with his family and businessman Aaron Meuth, his partner in other commercial properties. The property is held by ARA Capital LLC, a company Brown formed in January.
ARA purchased it from Soaper Preston LLC in February 2024 for $1.2 million.
Demolition of interior walls upstairs has begun and will take the upper floors “down to concrete” so remodeling can start from scratch. Brown hopes to have the upper five floors gutted by year’s end.
“It’s built like a parking garage,” Brown said admiringly. “You could take all the (interior) walls out and the (brick) perimeter walls out and it would still be standing.”
Design work for the hotel is underway. Brown said he has hired BRP Architects of Springfield, Missouri. Its website indicates it has designed some 50 hotels, such as the DoubleTree by Hilton in downtown Evansville, the Cambria Hotel on Louisville’s Whiskey Row and 13 Embassy Suites around the country.
“They fell in love with it,” Brown said of the BRP team that visited the Soaper. “They said they were skeptics. They say they have come to a town to a building that’s about to fall down” or has antiquated infrastructure. (The current elevator in the Soaper, for example, was installed in 1998.)
Brown envisions a combination of double and queen guest rooms with “maybe a suite on each floor and probably one super-cool suite — a two-bedroom kind of deal.”
His vision is that the guest rooms would feature vintage-style furniture, such as poster beds, resembling furnishings “maybe from the ’30s or ’40s. That will be up to the interior designer.”
The Henderson Tourist Commission in 2022 commissioned a market analysis and financial feasibility study by a Chicago real estate development consultant that recommended that the Soaper Building be redeveloped into a 50-room boutique hotel.
“Henderson currently lacks supply of quality hotel product,” the 143-page study declared. “This limits Henderson’s ability to capture potential hotel demand, losing overnight stays to Evansville and Owensboro … “Interviews with multiple employers indicated executives desire a destination with high-quality hospitality and food and beverage options,” but existing hotels here don’t offer that, it said. The presence of Hometown Roots and Roast in the Soaper, along with other restaurants and coffee shops within walking distance, give the Soaper an advantage.
Converting the Soaper into a premium hotel would draw both corporate and tourism clients, the study said. The opening of The Vault, it said, would increase demand from group travelers, such as those coming to town for a wedding.
That study envisioned average daily room rates of $212 in 2026.
“We did our own study” with a firm from Atlanta that also found that a boutique hotel was feasible at the Soaper, Brown said.
While he and his partners don’t own adjacent off-street parking spaces for hotel guests, he said that “in less than a block in all directions we’ve come up with 400 parking spaces that’s available” from either on-street parking or arrangements made with owners of nearby off-street parking lots. Offering valet parking services is a possibility, Brown said.
The new Soaper Hotel would be operated by a boutique hotel management company, he said.
The hotel lobby would be located on the second floor, possibly with a salon, fitness center, massage spa or offices.
But he doesn’t see much prospect for a rooftop bar or restaurant, citing both elevator and climate issues.
